Recently, a collaboration technique has become popular whereby a plurality of terminal users on a web-based network, such as the Internet, perform a cooperative operation (browsing, moving or alteration) on a web page. FIG. 17 is a diagram for explaining a cooperative operation which is performed on web pages displayed by two terminals through collaboration technique. In FIG. 17, for terminals A and B, a window size and a displayed web page (its URL) are matched for web browser windows 1710 on display devices. Further, the display locations of scroll bars 1720 and remote pointers 1730 are also matched. The remote pointer 1730 is a pointer displayed for a cooperative operation, and when the remote pointer 1730 is moved by one terminal (e.g., terminal A), accordingly, the remote pointer 1730 displayed by the other terminal (e.g., terminal B) is moved.
Further, in FIG. 17, displays 1740, which are described as annotations, and the entries on input forms 1750 are matched. This means that an operation performed on one of the terminals A and B is reflected and displayed on the screen of the other terminal by synchronizing the web browsers of the terminals A and B. When, for example, the terminal of a customer and the terminal of an agent or operator are synchronized using this collaboration technique, and the customer and the agent write on the same web page, a service can be provided whereby the agent can cope with the request of the customer.
For conventional collaboration, absolute coordinates, for which the window 1710 of a browser is used as a reference, are employed to specify the synchronous locations of the scroll bar 1720 and the remote pointer 1730. That is, the display size of the window 1710 of the web browser is set in advance, and the locations of scroll bars 1720 and the remote pointers 1730 in the windows 1710 are matched between the terminals, so that the locations of the scroll bars 1720 and the remote pointers 1730 are synchronized.
This collaboration is implemented by using software that provides the collaboration (hereinafter referred to as collaboration software) required to synchronize a plurality of terminal devices that are engaging in a cooperative operation. The collaboration software includes software that is installed in advance in terminals that perform a cooperative operation, and software that is downloaded by each terminal before execution.
When the collaboration software to be installed in terminals in advance is employed, various setups for the individual terminals can be used in common. Therefore, it is easy for the displays in the windows 1710 of the web browsers to be matched. However, this type of collaboration software must be installed in advance for all the terminals engaging in a cooperative operation. This can be done easily when, for example, the cooperative operation is an intra-company event or is one that involves companies whereat a large number of users are to participate and predetermined terminal devices are to be employed, while it is difficult to provide the collaboration software for an unspecified number of individual users. This is because of the problems that will be encountered when individual users having different capabilities and knowledge levels are requested to install and setup the collaboration software.
The required collaboration software that must be downloaded to each terminal before a cooperative operation is prepared using Java applets or JavaScript, and for the event, must be downloaded from a server machine by a terminal. Therefore, since it is not necessary to install the collaboration software on a terminal device in advance, it is easy for each user to download and set up the software. Further, if the collaboration software is prepared in a form that is platform (operating system) and web browser independent, such as Java applets or JavaScript installing the collaboration software will be easier.
However, in this method, it is too difficult to do detailed setup work for the software and terminal devices, and the contents that can be synchronized are limited. Generally, conventional collaboration software of this type includes only a function for synchronizing the URLs of the web pages that are displayed by web browsers.
As is described above, the conventional collaboration technique employs absolute coordinates, for which only the window of a web browser is used as a reference, in order to synchronize scrolling and the locations of the remote pointers in windows. Thus, when different web browsers are employed by different terminal devices to be used for a cooperative operation, the display locations of the web pages and the locations of the remote pointers may not match because of differences in rendering methods. Further, even though the same web browser may be employed, when the font sizes and/or window sizes differ, accordingly, the sizes and locations of objects displayed in the windows of the web browsers will also differ from one terminal device to the other, so that the synchronization of scrolling and of the positioning of remote pointers will be impossible.
FIG. 18 is a diagram showing a state wherein the remote pointers 1730 point at different web page locations because font sizes differ, even though a common web browser and the same window size are employed. According to one of the conventional collaboration techniques by which collaboration software is installed in advance for terminal devices, setup items for a web browser can be common when the software is installed, so that scrolling and remote pointers can be synchronized, and the same locations are always pointed at on all web pages. In this case, however, if a user changes the setup items for the web browser, synchronization of the scrolling and of the remote pointers will not be possible, as is shown in FIG. 18. Therefore, an environment must be provided that a user can not easily alter.
According to the other conventional collaboration technique, whereby the downloading of collaboration software by a terminal device serves as a prelude to a cooperative operation, a user of a terminal device can arbitrarily set up a web browser; however, as is described above, since synchronization of the scrolling and of the remote pointers can not be obtained, a cooperative operation can be performed only for extremely limited contents.